Every once in a while a great film comes along which seems to transcend the medium, to give one faith in the movies, even hope that everything on this planet is not futile. LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST is such a film. It has garnered a great deal of critical acclaim wherever it has been shown and a top prize at the 1988 Venice Film Festival. LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST is the story of two Greek children, 11-year-old Voula and her 5-year-old brother Alexander, who wander across the start Greek winter landscape as they attempt to make their way, by train and by other means, to Germany. It is almost a mythic quest to find their father, who in reality does not even exist. Around this delicate framework, Angelopoulos has fashioned a work of soaring lyricism, a film of magniloquent majesty, a haunting poem that moves us to the depth of our souls. As with the work of some other great directors like Bergman, Kurosawa, Rossellini, Bresson and Antonioni, Angelopoulos' films require an especially intense effort on the part of the audience not often required or inclined to give itself so fully to a movie that even the consumption of popcorn seems an obscenity. Credit has to be given also to the photography of Giorgos Arvanitis and the impassioned musical backdrop of Eleni Karaindrou who would receive such acclaim for her score for Angelopoulos' subsequent ULYSSES' GAZE. Tonino Guerra, one of Fellini's constant scriptwriters, collaborated on the script.
Review of Landscape in the Mist
